Up above, high in the mountains of eastern India lies the village of Kongthong — one from the cluster ( called Khadar Shnong) of 12 idyllic villages in Meghalaya — where people address each other in the most delightful way, by singing a song. Yes!
In Kongthong, people don’t have the concept of names but instead have a tune assigned to every person by which s/he is identified. This has been a tradition since time immemorial. We came across this old video by CCTV news about this village and we are fascinated, to say the least.
Explaining how this works, E F Sancley, a Ph.D. scholar at the department of English of North Eastern Hill University, told TOI,
“When a woman is pregnant, she thinks of a particular tune, sometimes a birdcall, which becomes the name of the newborn. After the birth of the child, adults around it constantly hum that tune so that it identifies with the sound. This is an age-old tradition the origin of which is as distant as the region itself. It is particularly useful during hunting expeditions. When a group goes hunting, they use these sounds to alert fellow members without arousing the curiosity of another group that may be after the same prey.”
For the people of Kongthong village, it is a mark of their identity. They don’t call each other by names but that particular tune, and the pitch determines whether it is a distress call or just a greeting.
Not just that, their tradition also encompasses a ceremony in which every unmarried young man sings his own tune. The one who performs the best is announced as the most popular one and is automatically chosen by the most beautiful woman as her groom. This folk cult has kept the tradition alive.
Watch the video here.